Download Comments on the film Blue Eyed

Dana Paličková
FF UK – 4th year of sociology
Lecturer: PhDr. Laura Laubeová
Multiculturalism in Western Europe and North America
Summer 2002
Comments on the film Blue Eyed
Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis on the 4th of April, 1968. He was
forced to silence before his “dream” could come true. His days put to end a violent expression
of social phenomenon, to fight with which he dedicated his life. As he gradually gained the
power to influence what people thought and insert revolutionary ideas in their minds, he
became inconvenient to some in the American society. He was different, but not invisible any
more. Owing largely to the successes of the affirmative action, the social situation in the
United States has undergone a substantial change towards the better since then. One of the
many contributors to creating a discrimination-sensitive society is a Riceville teacher Jane
Elliot. She, like Martin Luther King, is the living evidence of the many times challenged
phrase: “One person can make difference.”
In general, social experiments don’t work. It is complicated to conduct social
experiments into the social behavior of humans as the conductor can hardly create an
absolutely controlled situation. Also, the problem of causality and the observer effect are in
question. Sociology, in its first phase (till the 50’s of the 20th century), was designated to
serve as a means of societal change. In the course of time, sociologists resigned the idea of
social engineering and focused rather on the description of social facts.
Jane Elliot devised and conducted herself an exercise that could be regarded as a
small-scale social experiment with a specific interest. The interest behind the exercise was to
explain the murder of M. L. King and consequently the phenomenon of discrimination to her
class. Jane divided her class of 3rd graders according to their eye-color in two groups: the
blue-eyed and the brown-eyed (both the eye and skin-color are caused by the amount of
melanin in the body.) The brown-eyed group was told to be superior and better than the blueeyed and the rules for the day were set up unjustly in a clearly discriminatory way (similarly
to those in society.) In spite of the knowledge of undergoing just an exercise, the children
identified with their new roles almost immediately and started to discriminate against each
other. As one of the students later said: “Once it started you forgot it’s a project as it was such
a reality.” (Blue Eyed)
Children’s behavior in the course of the experiment could be attributed to particular
sociological concepts: the socialization theory and the labeling theory. In the process of
socializing into culture part of which is racial prejudice and discrimination, children develop a
pattern of an unconscious and unintentional racism. The 3rd graders were asked their opinion
on black people before the actual exercise commenced. Having lived in an all-white
community and hence having no personal experience with black people, the children,
however, referred to black people as being not as smart, clean and civilized as white people.
During their socialization process, children internalized uncritically this mode of thinking
through what they heard from their significant others (parents, relatives, teachers and friends)
and from the media. Being one of the significant others, Jane represented the authority to her
students. They believed one group was better than the other because their teacher said so.
They believed black people were not as good as white people because their parents said so.
Racism is also the problem of the unquestioned authority.
A persistent assigning of negative characteristics to a specific group of people makes
the people start to feel negative about themselves and as a result they act in a way as if they
actually possessed such negative characteristics. This consequently affects the way the group
appears to other people. The students assumed black people to be worse than white people,
putting labels like dirty or stupid on them. Interestingly enough, the blue-eyed group
identified in the exercise with their new role of being inferior very quickly, and eventually
started to feel inferior. They described they felt humiliated, depressed and aggressive.
Resulting from the negative feelings about themselves, the blue-eyed group performed on an
academically lower level on their “discrimination day” than they normally did. As Jane puts
it: “It’s a simple enough equation: choose a group, discriminate against it, force it by your
discrimination to look and act inferior, and then point to the way it looks and acts as proof of
its inferiority.” (A Class Divided, 168)
The extraordinary exercise has made difference in many children’s and adults’ lives
since the first experiment in 1968. Jane has continued to carry out the discrimination lesson
up to present days. She succeeded in making people more sensitive to manifestations of
racism, teaching them not to take at face value everything the authority says. Through the
emotional involvement that the exercise required, she made her students aware of what
discriminated people actually feel like and helped them understand their position in society.
She gave them lesson not to be forgotten. After all, small-scale social experiments might
work.
Sources:
Peters, William: A Class Divided : Then and Now. London: Yale University Press, 1971
Strigel, Claus, Verhaag, Bertram: Blue Eyed. Iowa, 1996